Big Brother Chronicles

Who Watches Big Brother?

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

The Dogs of Disinformation and CoIntelPro

It's quite interesting to see how websites that peddle disinformation respond to being called on it, especially when the disinformation that's peddled serves the very powers they claim to be shining a light on. Seems that whatever Big Brother can't suppress, he marginalizes, what he can't marginalize he twists and confuses, and when that doesn't work, well, you have what Signs of the Times seems to be undergoing by the attack dogs unleashed by the Above Top Secret.com site.

This evening I was greeted by this news on the Signs page - which is arguably one of the most thouroughly researched and prolific sites on the web:

Signs Under Attack! abovetopsecret.com EXPOSED!!!

Some of you may have noticed that Signs of the Times was down three times today. This was a result of threats by abovetopsecret.com's attorney to our website host. It seems that abovetopsecret.com finally could no longer stand the negative attention they were getting from our exposure of them as a probable CoIntelPro operation, initially in the form of Joe Quinn's article:

which was an analysis of the "catherder" article on abovetopsecret.com which essentially was support for Bush and the Neocon's conspiracy theory about the events of September 11.

After removing this "offending material", we published the letter from abovetopsecret.com's attorney on our forum. Within FIVE minutes, the Signs page was taken down again by the website host. When we called our server to ask "what now," we were informed that abovetopsecret.com's attorney had called again and was claiming that in the five minutes the forum posting was up, he had already received death threats because we had published his name and location! (which, incidentally, is freely available on the web.) We were forced to remove that information also. It seems that abovetopsecret.com's attorney is also well-versed in the tactics of CoIntelPro.

As anyone who is familiar with copyright law knows, our rebuttal of the 'Catherder' article is perfectly legal under standard copyright law. However, abovetopsecret.com, like Bush and the Neocons, make up their own laws and enforce them with intimidation and bogus threats from their 'hired-gun' attorney. As Laura has chronicled on her blog, abovetopsecret.com's urgent demands that we remove this article because it was a violation of their "creative commons" copyright was absurd and simply evidence of their position as an active cointelpro/psy-ops propagator on the internet. It isn't copyrights that abovetopsecret.com is concerned about, it is google bombing and running psy-ops. And now, they have proven it.

This action also is highly suggestive of the idea that the Pentagon issue is a LOT more sensitive than anyone has thus far suspected! Do take note of THAT!

We hope that everyone who reads this will spread this information far and wide because these people are covert Bush supporters, Cyber Nazi Brown Shirts.

So that's what happens when you expose an outfit like Above Top Secret. Com! You get cunning lawyers calling the site's web host and claiming copyright infringement, which could not be further from the truth if one takes the time to read the articles or research copyright infringement laws. That is, if an article is critically examined by another article, it is not appropriating it to 'sell' it's own website or anything else. But this is more thoroughly examined here where the whole saga has been documented from the beginning.

Here is the letter we received from our server people after being notified by about a hundred people via email that the signs of the times site was down:

From: "James" **** To: Arkadiusz Jadczyk

Subject: FW: Notice of Copyright Infringement

Date sent: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:55:32 -0500

Date forwarded: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:38:12 -0600

Hi, we received the following complaint from your site. Please investigate this and let us know.

Pursuant to the CC Deed, these articles, each of which is owned by ATS and is the subject of a registration in the United States Copyright Office 1) may not be published on sites/pages with commercial advertisements; 2) may not be used to make "derivative works"; and 3) must provide proper attribution to the author and a link to the original article.

In each instance of content owned by ATS appearing on the "signs-of-the-times.org" website, all three of these conditions of the terms of use is violated. The owners/operators of ATS have attempted to contact the operator of signs-of-the-times.org and have this situation corrected by either removing the articles or republishing them in a manner that complies with the CC Deed. The operators of the Signs-of-the-times.org websites, Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Arkadiusz Jadczyk, have failed to comply.

We must therefore request that Velcom.com, as hosts for the Signs-of-the-times.org website, remove these pages from publication.

Moreover, this letter constitutes notice to the operators of Velcom.com that ATS believes that have a right to enforce their copyright under Canadian and U.S. law and reserves the right to take further action in the U.S., Canada, or both without further notice.

As well, this letter is also to serve notice on Velcom.com that the owners of ATS have rescinded all rights to the operators of signs-of-the-times.org under the CC Deed, in view of their continued non-compliance with the terms and conditions of use of original, copyright content appears on the abovetopsecret.com website.

Please contact me at ******* if you have any questions with regard to this matter. Otherwise, we look forward to the prompt and amicable resolution of this matter.

Regards,

Wayne Jaeschke

Wayne C. Jaeschke, Jr. Morrison & Foerster LLP

********************

McLean, VA 22102

phone: ****

fax: ****

wjaeschke@****.com

================================================

To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS, Morrison & Foerster LLP informs you that, if any advice concerning one or more U.S. Federal tax issues is contained in this communication (including any attachments), such advice is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed herein.

This message contains information which may be confidential and privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail @mofo.com, and delete the message.

Now folks, come on, how many websites that were just started by an ordinary guy who took on a couple of "ordinary" partners, and is just a hobby and sharing on the internet, are able to afford a copyright attorney in McLean Virginia???

This action also is highly suggestive of the idea that the Pentagon Issue is a LOT more sensitive than anyone has thus far suspected! Do take note of THAT!

I hope that everyone who reads this will spread this information far and wide because these people are EVIL Bush supporters, Cyber Nazi Brown Shirts.

Did a search on their lawyer, Wayne Jaeschke. Here is the official bio from his law firm's site (www.mofo.com!):

Mr. Jaeschke is a patent attorney in Morrison & Foerster LLP's Intellectual Property group. Wayne has been admitted to practice before the USPTO since 1994 and has substantial experience preparing and prosecuting patent applications in many fields, including: computer software, surface and polymer, electromechanical and optical devices, and pharmaceuticals. Wayne has also successfully handled internet domain name litigation and dispute resolution; copyright infringement litigation, inter partes reexamination, novelty, infringement and validity opinions for all technical disciplines; patent licensing, collaborative research agreements with major U.S. universities, and related intellectual property matters.

Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Jaeschke worked for Allied- Signal's water treatment polymer group where he assisted clients in the areas of papermaking, mining, oil refining, and municipal water treatment. After Allied Signal, Mr. Jaeschke worked for Betz' Laboratories paper chemicals group where he was a process specialist in the field of wet-end paper chemistry, recycled fiber usage and overall papermaking performance enhancement through the use of specialty chemical technology.

Mr. Jaeschke holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the degree of Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the American University's Washington College of Law and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

His law firm, Morrison & Foerster (hence the mofo) has this about the firm. Sounds like a high-powered and expensive one:

Morrison & Foerster maintains one of the largest intellectual property practices in the world, with more than 300 lawyers providing a full range of services, including counseling, prosecution, litigation, ­­­dispute resolution and licensing transactions in patent, trademark, and copyright matters.

The firm's practice has been consistently ranked by independent observers as one of the top intellectual property practices in the country. In 2003, the firm was short-listed for the USA Intellectual Property Law Firm of the Year Award by Chambers & Partners in London. In Managing IP's latest rankings of the top law firms in this field, Morrison & Foerster was one of only a small number of full-service firms (as opposed to IP boutiques) included in the Top 25 based on volume of U.S. contentious and non-contentious matters.

Morrison & Foerster's IP practice serves clients in a wide range of industries, including biotechnology, medical devices and healthcare; electronics, software, telecommunications, Internet and semiconductors; chemistry, chemical engineering and materials science; and media and entertainment. The firm's attorneys, including partners Tom Ciotti, Kate Murashige and Gladys Monroy, have played a significant role in the creation and protection of many of the landmark patent portfolios in the information technology and life science industries.

And this, regarding the complaint:

"... derivative works"; and 3) must provide proper attribution to the author and a link to the original article."

Frozen fish is not technically a derivative work. A derivative use of the original would be if you made a movie using the article as a script, or if you translated the original article into another language. Although this is somewhat of a gray area:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/derivative/

"In short, a derivative work is a whole work based on one or more other whole works"

Criticism is protected under copyright law:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/notice.cgi?NoticeID=7

"The most significant factor in this analysis is the fourth, effect on the market. If a copier's use supplants demand for the original work, then it will be very difficult for him or her to claim fair use. On the other hand, if the use does not compete with the original, for example because it is a parody, criticism, or news report, it is more likely to be permitted as "fair use.""

So, it appears that ATS is claiming that Frozen Fish will supplant demand for the original article.

To decide whether a use is "fair use" or not, courts consider:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit education purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and,

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. 17 U.S.C. 107(1-4)

Number one in the above list is why ATS has been harping on the links to book sales.

Joe Quinn, author of the critique of the abovetopsecret.com article has sent the following:

The "derivative work" claim is BS, pure and simple. I did not "alter, transform, or build upon" the ATS piece, so it is not a derivative work. Commercial use would be if they were some charge for people to access the work - there is none. The use of the ATS piece was criticism, therefore it was not competing with the original work.

Notice that in the lawyer's email, he does not make reference to any law, Why? Because there is no legal infringement. Of course, all of this is academic since the server folks are not in the business of defending their clients, they will bow down to the mighty dollar, or the threat of having to spend some, every time. So psychopathic manipulative tactics win the day, as usual. I think a lawyer joke is in order.

The devil visited a lawyer's office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you, " the devil said. "I'll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you'll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife's soul, your children's souls, and their children's souls rot in hell for eternity."

The lawyer thought for a moment. "What's the catch?" he asked.

The best we can do is use this episode to further expose the abovetopsecret.com crowd for what they are: the Internet equivalent of the national Enquirer: disinfo, psy-ops and just plain trash.

C.I.A. Censors Orwell

Many people remember reading George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in high school or college, with its chilling finale in which the farm animals looked back and forth at the tyrannical pigs and the exploitative human farmers but found it "impossible to say which was which."

That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of Hollywood butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's secret producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.

The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950, agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame) to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.

Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often absurd lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book, "The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters" (The New Press) by Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist. Published in Britain last summer, the book will appear here next month.

Much of what Ms. Stonor Saunders writes about, including the C.I.A.'s covert sponsorship of the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom and the British opinion magazine Encounter, was exposed in the late 1960's, generating a wave of indignation. But by combing through archives and unpublished manuscripts and interviewing several of the principal actors, Ms. Stonor Saunders has uncovered many new details and gives the most comprehensive account yet of the agency's activities between 1947 and 1967.

This picture of the C.I.A.'s secret war of ideas has cameo appearances by scores of intellectual celebrities like the critics Dwight Macdonald and Lionel Trilling, the poets Ted Hughes and Derek Walcott and the novelists James Michener and Mary McCarthy, all of whom directly or indirectly benefited from the C.I.A.'s largesse. There are also bundles of cash that were funneled through C.I.A. fronts and several hilarious schemes that resemble a "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon more than a serious defense against Communism.

Traveling first class all the way, the C.I.A. and its counterparts in other Western European nations sponsored art exhibitions, intellectual conferences, concerts and magazines to press their larger anti-Soviet agenda. Ms. Stonor Saunders provides ample evidence, for example, that the editors at Encounter and other agency-sponsored magazines were ordered not to publish articles directly critical of Washington's foreign policy. She also shows how the C.I.A. bankrolled some of the earliest exhibitions of Abstract Expressionist painting outside of the United States to counter the Socialist Realism being advanced by Moscow.

In one memorable episode, the British Foreign Office subsidized the distribution of 50,000 copies of "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler's anti-Communist classic. But at the same time, the French Communist Party ordered its operatives to buy up every copy of the book. Koestler received a windfall in royalties courtesy of his Communist adversaries.

As it turns out, "Animal Farm" was not the only instance of the C.I.A.'s dabbling in Hollywood. Ms. Stonor Saunders reports that one operative who was a producer and talent agent slipped affluent-looking African-Americans into several films as extras to try to counter Soviet criticism of the American race problem.

The agency also changed the ending of the movie version of "1984," disregarding Orwell's specific instructions that the story not be altered. In the book, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is entirely defeated by the nightmarish totalitarian regime. In the very last line, Orwell writes of Winston, "He loved Big Brother." In the movie, Winston and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston defiantly shouts: "Down with Big Brother!"

Such changes came from the agency's obsession with snuffing out a notion then popular among many European intellectuals: that East and West were morally equivalent. But instead of illustrating the differences between the two competing systems by taking the high road, the agency justified its covert activities by referring to the unethical tactics of the Soviets.

"If the other side can use ideas that are camouflaged as being local rather than Soviet-supported or -stimulated, then we ought to be able to use ideas camouflaged as local ideas," Tom Braden, who ran the C.I.A.'s covert cultural division in the early 1950's, explained years later. (In one of the book's many amusing codas, Mr. Braden goes on in the 1980's to become the leftist foil to Patrick Buchanan on the CNN program "Crossfire.")

The cultural cold war began in postwar Europe, with the fraying of the wartime alliance between Washington and Moscow. Officials in the West believed they had to counter Soviet propaganda and undermine the wide sympathy for Communism in France and Italy.

An odd alliance was struck between the C.I.A. leaders, most of them wealthy Ivy League veterans of the wartime Office of Strategic Services and a corps of largely Jewish ex-Communists who had broken with Moscow to become virulently anti-Communist. Acting as intermediaries between the agency and the intellectual community were three colorful agents who included Vladimir Nabokov's much less talented cousin, Nicholas, a composer.

The C.I.A. recognized from the beginning that it could not openly sponsor artists and intellectuals in Europe because there was so much anti-American feeling there. Instead, it decided to woo intellectuals out of the Soviet orbit by secretly promoting a non-Communist left of democratic socialists disillusioned with Moscow.

Ms. Stonor Saunders describes how the C.I.A. cleverly skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars from the Marshall Plan to finance its activities, funneling the money through fake philanthropies it created or real ones like the Ford Foundation.

"We couldn't spend it all," Gilbert Greenway, a former C.I.A. agent, recalled. "There were no limits, and nobody had to account for it. It was amazing."

When some of the C.I.A.'s activities were exposed in the late 1960's, many artists and intellectuals claimed ignorance. But Ms. Stonor Saunders makes a strong case that several people, including the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the poet Stephen Spender, who was co-editor of Encounter, knew about the C.I.A.'s role.

"She has made it very difficult now to deny that some of these things happened," said Norman Birnbaum, a professor at the Georgetown University Law School who was a university professor in Europe in the 1950's and early 1960's. "And she has placed a lot of people living and dead in embarrassing situations."

Still unresolved is what impact the campaign had and whether it was worth it. Some of the participants, like Arthur M.

Schlesinger Jr., who was in the O.S.S. and knew about some of the C.I.A.'s cultural activities, argue that the agency's role was benign, even necessary. Compared with the coups the C.I.A. sponsored in Guatemala, Iran and elsewhere, he said, its support of the arts was some of its best work. "It enabled people to publish what they already believed," he added. "It didn't change anyone's course of action or thought."

But Diana Josselson, whose husband, Michael, ran the Congress for Cultural Freedom, told Ms. Stonor Saunders that there were real human costs among those around the world who innocently cooperated with the agency's front organizations only to be tarred with a C.I.A. affiliation when the truth came out. The author and other critics argue that by using government money covertly to promote such American ideals as democracy and freedom of expression, the agency ultimately stepped on its own message.

"Obviously it was an error, and a rather serious error, to allow intellectuals to be subsidized by the government," said Alan Brinkley, a history professor at Columbia University. "And when it was revealed, it did undermine their credibility seriously."

Saturday, March 04, 2006

V for Vendetta, P for Pathocracy

When I read Alan Moore's graphic novel, 'V for Vendetta' almost twenty years ago, I then had little or no idea of what fascism was, hadn't yet read Orwell's '1984', and could only be entertained, not enlightened, by the author's tale of freedom fighting and consciousness-raising in the midst of what I now view as a portrayal of virulent pathocracy. Now that a film adaptation of this story has been produced by the Wachowski Brothers of 'Matrix' fame, and the U.S. and Great Britain are perilously close to resembling the envisioned dystopian reality of the story, it becomes necessary to look at this cinematic mirror and not get trapped by it's literal 'solutions'.

Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a young working-class woman named Evey who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man known only as "V."

Profoundly complex, V is at once literary, flamboyant, tender and intellectual, a man dedicated to freeing his fellow citizens from those who have terrorized them into compliance. He is also bitter, revenge-seeking, lonely and violent, driven by a personal vendetta.

In his quest to free the people of England from the corruption and cruelty that have poisoned their government, V condemns the tyrannical nature of their appointed leaders and invites his fellow citizens to join him in the shadows of Parliament on November the 5th Guy Fawkes Day.

On that day in 1605, Guy Fawkes was discovered in a tunnel beneath Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder. He and his co-conspirators had engineered the treasonous "Gunpowder Plot" in response to the tyranny of their government under James I. Fawkes and his fellow saboteurs were hanged, drawn and quartered, and their plan to take down their government never came to pass.

In the spirit of that rebellion, in remembrance of that day, V vows to carry out the plot that Fawkes was executed for attempting on November 5th in 1605: he will blow up Parliament.

As Evey uncovers the truth about V's mysterious past, she also discovers the truth about herself and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to ignite a revolution, bringing freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.

Guy Fawkes Day. Let's remember that for later. For now let's note that the Wachowski's took things down several sci-fi notches to tell a story which, in some ways, is very similar to the Matrix arc. The 'heroes' are able to see a control system, work to 'wake people up,' and/or dismantle a regime using any and all methods possible; the ends justifying the means to do so, ie. violence. When we remove the 'heroic' intent to liberate the masses, as V or even Morpheus does in either of these stories, one is left with heroes who inflict a lot of damage on people who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time - 0r who are asleep to the pathocracy that envelopes them. But one is invited, of course, to forgive the violence because we know that it is, in a sense, inflicted for some 'greater good'. There's a good analysis of this on shadowgalaxy.net.

So what's the value of V for Vendetta? Maybe one clue may be found in an interview with it's original author, Alan Moore, who has also written the acclaimed graphic novels 'From Hell,' 'Watchmen,' and 'The League of Extraordinary Gentleman'. Of the acts of violence V commits in the story, he says:

"There's a great kind of running theme in it about ideas being more powerful than the physical. The character Evey says about - or she thinks about - V, "Whoever you are isn't as big as the idea of you," and shortly afterwards she thinks "Your foes assumed you sought revenge upon their flesh alone, but you did not stop there... you gored their ideology as well." So, it was like the real battle was between ideas, almost as if all the physical violence was incidental."

So, perhaps like V goring the villians' ideology with violence, the filmakers attempted to, in the guise of sci-fi entertainment, wake up the masses with its thinly veiled references to the Bushite and Blairist regimes. The danger is for people watching or reading the story to assume that consciousness-raising or activism must or should include physical violence. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. This is why Donald Rumsfeld has so much invested in fighting the information war. But even if Rummy didn't do this, the physical controls are all in place. Halliburton is building the camps, in case you haven't heard.

So we are physically out-gunned. But we are not mentally outmatched - unless we are asleep or not thinking.

Lets get back to Guy Fawkes Day. This is an especially interesting day for the 'hero' V to be commemorating with an act of terrorism. Without digressing too much, we can see that even the 'gunpowder plot,' which this strange holiday commemorates the foiling of - was not what it seems. Or what the holiday-makers of England's establishment suggest it was. From Bonefire.org we get to know how some of the mechanisms of a false flag operation were being used over 400 years ago!

Was there really a Gunpowder Plot, or were the "conspirators" framed by the King?

There was no doubt an attempt to blow up Parliament on November 5th 1605. But Guy Fawkes and his associates may have been caught in a Jacobean sting operation which would have served the authorities by casting Catholics, or Recusants, as an enemy to be pursued.

By the time Queen Elizabeth died, after ruling for about fifty years, most people only remembered living under her rule. When James I succeeded to the throne, many saw an opportunity for change. Those who felt particularly hard done by, both by Elizabeth I and James I, even felt that the situation was so bad as to require, in Fawkes' own words, "a desperate remedy": it was an opportunity to simply replace the current king.

These were unstable times indeed, with several smaller plots being discovered in the years preceding 1605. In fact, many of the Gunpowder plotters were known as traitors to the authorities. For this reason, it would have been difficult, if not unlikely, that they could gather 36 barrels of gunpowder and store them in a cellar under the house of Lords without the security forces getting suspicious.

Furthermore, the letter warning one of the members of government to stay away from Parliament is believed today to have been fabricated by the king's officials. Historians suggest that the King's officials already knew about the plot, that one of the plotters in fact revealed the key points of the plot to the authorities. The suspected turncoat? Francis Tresham.

The letter, then, would be a tool created by the King's officials to explain how, at the last minute, the king found out about the Plot and stopped it just before it wreaked its havoc on Parliament and himself. At the same time, the letter was vague enough to give the officials all the latitude they wanted in falsifying confessions and to pursue their own anti-Catholic ends.

There are two fundamental problems with the letter. Firstly, the letter was unsigned. Any and all of the conspirators, once apprehended, might have saved themselves from torture and perhaps even death if they could claim to have written it. None did. Not one of the conspirators who was caught appears to have known about the letter. Secondly, the letter was very vague in its content. It said nothing about the details of the planned attack. Still, the king and his men knew exactly the where and when to catch the conspirators and stop the explosion just hours before it was to take place.

How did they know?

Indeed, the King, the article suggests, knew about the plot from those who were on the inside of it, and the King benefitted because he was then able to justify persuing Catholics, or Recusants - his political opposition. Makes me wonder how this story may leave a kind of imprint on V for Vendetta. What if, on some level, this story becomes consciousnessess-razing and leaves people emotionally pumped to 'act out' against the 'powers that be' in a Guy Fawkes kind of a way? These acts would then seem to justify more controls, wouldn't they? Exactly opposite of what the film professes to support. Let's hope V for Vendetta does more good than harm, though that may be hard to quantify.

Gee, all this talk about control systems has done something to remind me of another V.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Ubiquitous Orwell

It seems that if you're doing any serious amount of political observation these days, it's kind of hard not to dust off that old copy of 1984 and start comparing it with what you're seeing.

Last week we had Nat Hentoff's piece in the Village Voice called the The War on Privacy.He writes:

There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. . . . But at any rate they would plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live from habit that became instinct that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.George Orwell

One morning, in his Supreme Court chambers, Justice William Brennan was giving me a lesson on the American Revolution. "A main precipitating cause of our revolution," he said, "was the general search warrant that British customs officers wrote�without going to any court�to break into the American colonists' homes and offices, looking for contraband." Everything, including the colonists, was turned upside down.

He added that news of these recurrent assaults on privacy were spread through the colonies by the Committees of Correspondence that Sam Adams and others organized, inflaming the outraged Americans.

Now, the Congressional Democratic leadership has finally found an issue to focus on�the vanishing of Americans' privacy, as happened before the American Revolution, but currently on a scale undreamed of by Sam Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the other patriots in the Committees of Correspondence.

The rising present anger around the country, across party lines, is reflected in a February 3 Zogby Interactive poll that "finds Americans largely unwilling to surrender civil liberties�even if it is to prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks. . . . Even routine security measures, like random searches of bags, purses, and other packages, were opposed by half (50 percent) of respondents in the survey. . . . Just 28 percent are willing to allow their telephone conversations to be monitored."

On the other hand, nearly half (45 percent) favored at least "a great deal" of government secrecy in the war on terror. But the public's awareness that the United States has increasingly become a nation under surveillance is indicated by resistance not only to random searches and tapping into our telephone conversations. Zogby says: This is a "public obsessed with civil liberties."

Well, not obsessed yet, but growingly apprehensive.

Hentoff ends the piece by posing the question:

Will the Democrats become a truly serious opposition party before privacy disappears entirely?

As if. Perhaps he should read Crisis of the Republic, and then perhaps his readers would be asking something else entirely.

But back to citing Orwellian concepts, we have the Los Angeles Times editorial Advise and Assent:

That the United States Senate has a body called the Intelligence Committee is an irony George Orwell would have truly appreciated. In a world without Doublespeak, the panel, chaired by GOP Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, would be known by a more appropriate name - the Senate Coverup Committee.

Although the committee is officially charged with overseeing the nation's intelligence-gathering operations, its real function in recent years has been to prevent the public from getting hold of any meaningful information about the Bush administration. Hence its never-ending delays of the probe into the bogus weapons intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq. And its squelching, on Thursday, of an expected investigation into the administration's warrantless spying program.

The committee adjourned without voting on a proposal to probe the National Security Agency program, under which government agents have set up wiretaps on Americans without the warrants required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. President Bush has acknowledged that he greenlighted the program, essentially claiming that Congress gave him the power to break federal law and violate Americans' 4th Amendment rights when it authorized the use of force after the 9/11 attacks. Though the administration's legal defense has been laughable, its argument that the powers are essential to fight terrorism has scored political points, ratcheting up the pressure on the Senate.

Roberts justified his committee's cave by saying the White House had committed itself to working with senators to pursue legislation on the matter. Translation: Bush won't accept any curbs on his power whatsoever, but he'd be happy to see a bill legalizing his wiretaps.

There's a slim chance the House of Representatives might show more backbone.

****************

Well, at least the above writer for the LA Times has less of an illusion about our elected officials than Mr. Hentoff. But if one is to allude to Orwell, one would do well to suggest how pervasive the system of control really is. And NSA wiretapping under Bush was certainly not the beginning. So where to begin?